New Research Indicates Competitive Oil & Gas Reserves for Poland

    The main government vehicles are upstream operator PGNiG, with partly privatised PKN Orlen and Grupa Lotos responsible for refining activities. These two companies are also the leading players in fuels distribution, but IOCs have a growing share of the downstream oil segment. PKN Orlen and Grupa Lotos have been holding talks on cooperation with a view to a potential merger. Both companies are concerned by the threat of a hostile takeover, either from a major Central European player or a Russian company.

IOC downstream involvement is extensive, but limited largely to distribution of fuels, LPG and lubricants. BP, Shell and Statoil are the biggest foreign competitors in the fuels market.  Grupa Lotos has a 120,000b/d refinery at Gdansk that is being enlarged and upgraded. The firm now owns or operates some 355 retail sites and is aiming for a network of 500 under its retail development program.

PKN Orlen holds 40% of the overall Polish fuels market, including around 26% of the retail segment through a chain of 1,803 retail outlets. It has 76% of national refining capacity and operates the country’s largest plant, Plock. Total capacity is 377,000b/d.

PERN is the owner and operator of all of Poland’s major oil pipelines and owns a number of oil tank farms located along its pipelines. In November 2009 it received 100% of the shares in OLPP from the state.

BP has over 380 retail outlets and a market share estimated at 5%. It is the second largest LPG supplier in Poland. Lubricants are marketed under the BP, Aral and Castrol brand names.

Statoil operates a network of 292 service stations in Poland — ranking it fifth behind PKN Orlen, Lotos, BP and Shell — with an estimated market share of 4%.

Shell’s chain of 349 retail outlets provides the group with a market share of around 5%. The major has indicated that it is looking to increase its Polish network to around 550 sites.

MOL originally targeted Poland using fuels supplied by the Slovnaft refinery in Bratislava. It has a cooperation agreement with PKN Orlen. In 2006 it agreed the sale of its Slovnaft sites in Poland.

Aurelian Oil & Gas, a British explorer listed on the AIM market in London, completed a study in March 2008 that found deposits of natural gas that could exceed 5bcm in the Poznan area.